Fanny was passing her hand again over the little figure which kept inviting the caress of her long, white fingers, of her soft, rosy palm.
"Hermann says he must go to the country,—a bit high,—if he is to be saved and at his age one can't delay."
So it was done—as easy as that after all. That little wooden peasant woman cried out not alone of young talent but of fresh air, the fruits of the field, you couldn't get away from it, not that Fanny was trying to; further more the familiar story of family needs, now one thing now another, chased away the last trace of embarrassment. She was on the firmest of grounds there, only she was thinking again how old and ill her aunt was looking and did not answer immediately. When she did it was to exclaim warmly again:
"But naturally! Of course we must send him to the country. Manny will tell us where." Then Fanny, who was, indeed, as Pauli said, "a good fellow" and no fool either added, "Don't you want to take the money to Irma yourself?"
So that was all it was—that stone-heavy act! Light as thistledown really—because Fanny was Fanny.
Then suddenly as she sat there looking at her, for she knew not how long, with still unspent treasures of love in her look, she saw that Fanny's eyes were wet, not because of Ferry either, he could be helped, but because of other things, things that she, her poor aunt, didn't know about. She saw that for all Fanny's gayety there were rings around her lovely eyes and that she was pale under that merest touch of rouge. The merest touch was all she ever used. She was too wise as well as too lovely to be the painted woman. Fanny hung out no signs.
Then Frau Stacher found herself saying to her niece who lived just off the Kaerntner Street:
"Fanny, precious one, you too, have some grief."
Frau Stacher was seeing all things from a great but clear distance. Things stood out very sharply now that that feverish blur seemed suddenly to have been wiped from her eyes. It was as if she, Ildefonse Stacher, stood on a mountain and saw the world, a valleyed plain, spread out before her. Mortals dwelt in it, doing their little best or their little worst. Sharp as their figures were it was still too far to see what exactly was their best and what their worst. Legions of them. Hosts of them. She saw Fanny fighting under deep-dyed colors, in an innumerable army of women, drawn up in array against the sons of other women. The look she bent upon her niece as she turned from the contemplation of the armies in the plain became more tender, more grave.
Fanny's eyes flooded with tears under that look; hanging crystal a moment about her dark lashes, they fell slowly leaving smooth, shining, white little roads down her cheeks with just that touch of rouge. Such a little thing as that Frau Stacher could focus her eyes on,—even after the immensity of the plain.